Jack the Ripper
"With the Vigilance Committee in the East End: A Suspicious Character" from The Illustrated London News, 13 October 1888.
Background information
Birth name:	Identity unknown
Also known as:	Jack the Ripper Whitechapel murderer Leather Apron
Killings
Number of victims:	5+?
Span of killings:	1888–?
Country:	England

Jack the Ripper is a pseudonym given to an unidentified serial killer active in the largely impoverished districts in and around Whitechapel, London, in late 1888. The name originated in a letter by someone claiming to be the murderer that was disseminated in the media. The letter is widely considered to be a hoax, and may have been written by a journalist in a deliberate attempt to heighten interest in the story.

Attacks ascribed to the Ripper typically involve women prostitutes whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. The removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to proposals that their killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge. Rumours that the murders were connected intensified in September and October 1888, and media outlets and Scotland Yard received a series of extremely disturbing letters from a writer or writers purporting to be the murderer. One letter, received by George Lusk, of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, included half of a preserved human kidney, supposedly from one of the victims. Mainly because of the extraordinarily brutal character of the murders, and because of media treatment of the events, the public came increasingly to believe in a single serial killer, Jack the Ripper, who terrorised the residents of Whitechapel. Extensive newspaper coverage bestowed widespread and enduring international notoriety on the Ripper. Though the murders most often attributed to the Ripper occurred in the latter half of 1888, a longer series of brutal killings in Whitechapel persisted at least until 1891. Although the investigation was unable to connect the later killings conclusively to the murders of 1888, the legend of Jack the Ripper solidified.

Because the murders were never solved, the legends surrounding them have become a combination of genuine historical research, folklore, and pseudohistory. The term "ripperology" was coined to describe the study and analysis of the Ripper cases. There are over one hundred theories about the Ripper's identity, and the murders have inspired multiple works of fiction.

[edit] Background

In the mid 19th century, England experienced a rapid influx of Irish immigrants, who swelled the populations of England's major cities. Many settled in the East End of London. From 1882, they were joined by Jewish refugees who had fled economic hardship and pogroms in eastern Europe and Tsarist Russia.^[1] The East End and the civil parish of Whitechapel became increasingly overcrowded. Work and housing conditions worsened, and a massive economic underclass developed.^[2] Robbery, violence and alcohol dependency were commonplace, and the endemic poverty drove many women to prostitution. In October 1888, the London Metropolitan Police estimated that there were 1,200 prostitutes resident in Whitechapel and about 62 brothels.^[3] The economic problems were accompanied by a steady rise in social tensions. In 1886–89, the hungry and unemployed demonstrated frequently, which led to police interventions and public unrest, such as Bloody Sunday (1887).^[4] Racism, crime, social disturbance, and real deprivation fed public perceptions that Whitechapel was a notorious den of immorality.^[5] In 1888, such perceptions were strengthened when a series of vicious and grotesque murders attributed to "Jack the Ripper" received unprecedented coverage in the media.^[6]

[edit] Murders

The sites of the first seven Whitechapel murders – Osborn Street (centre right), George Yard (centre left), Hanbury Street (top), Buck's Row (far right), Berner Street (bottom right), Mitre Square (bottom left), and Dorset Street (middle left).

The large number of horrific attacks against women in the East End during this era adds uncertainty to how many victims were killed by the same man.^[7] Eleven separate murders, stretching from 3 April 1888 to 13 February 1891, were included in a London Metropolitan Police Service investigation, and were known in the police docket as the "Whitechapel murders".^[8][9] Opinions vary as to whether these murders should be linked to the same culprit or not, but five of the eleven Whitechapel murders, known as the "canonical five", are widely believed to be the work of the Ripper.^[10] Most experts point to deep throat slashes, abdominal and genital-area mutilation, removal of internal organs, and progressive facial mutilations as the distinctive features of Jack the Ripper's modus operandi.^[11]

The first two cases in the Whitechapel murders file are non-canonical and are:

• Emma Elizabeth Smith: she was robbed and sexually assaulted on Osborn Street, Whitechapel, on 3 April 1888. A blunt object was inserted into her vagina, which ruptured her peritoneum. She developed peritonitis, and died the following day at London Hospital.^[12] She said that she had been attacked by two or three men, one of whom was a teenager.^[13] Though this attack was linked to the later murders by the press,^[14] it was almost certainly gang violence unrelated to the Ripper.^[8][15][16]
• Martha Tabram: she was killed on 7 August 1888. She had 39 stab wounds. The savagery of Tabram's murder, the lack of obvious motive, and the closeness of the location (George Yard, Whitechapel) and date to those of the later Ripper murders led police to link them.^[17] However, the attack differs from the canonical ones in that Tabram was stabbed rather than slashed at the throat and abdomen. Many experts today do not connect it with the later murders because of the difference in the wound pattern.^[18]

[edit] Canonical five

The canonical five Ripper victims are:

• Mary Ann Nichols: she was killed on Friday 31 August 1888. Her body was discovered at about 3:40 a.m. in Buck's Row (now Durward Street), Whitechapel. Her throat was severed deeply by two cuts, and the lower part of the abdomen was partly ripped open by a deep, jagged wound. Several other incisions on her abdomen were caused by the same knife.^[19]
• Annie Chapman: she was killed on Saturday 8 September 1888. Her body was discovered at about 6 a.m. near a doorway in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. As in the case of Mary Ann Nichols, her throat was severed by two cuts.^[20] Her abdomen was slashed entirely open, and it was later discovered that her uterus had been removed.^[21] At the inquest, one witness described seeing Chapman with a dark-haired man of "shabby-genteel" appearance at about 5:30 a.m.^[22]
• Elizabeth Stride: she was killed on Sunday 30 September 1888 at about 1 a.m., in Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street (now Henriques Street) in Whitechapel. There was one clear-cut incision on the neck, which severed the main artery on the left side and was the cause of death. Some uncertainty about whether Stride's murder should be attributed to the Ripper, or whether he was interrupted during the attack, stem from the absence of mutilations to the abdomen.^[23] Witnesses who may have seen Stride with a man earlier that night gave differing descriptions: some said her companion was fair, others dark; some said he was shabbily-dressed, others well-dressed.^[24]
• Catherine Eddowes: she, like Stride, was killed on Sunday 30 September 1888. Her body was found in Mitre Square, in the City of London, three-quarters of an hour after Stride's. The throat was severed, and the abdomen was ripped open by a long, deep, jagged wound. The left kidney and the major part of the uterus had been removed. A local man, Joseph Lawende, had passed through the square shortly before the murder with two friends, and he described seeing a fair-haired man of shabby appearance with a woman who may have been Eddowes.^[25] His companions, however, were unable to confirm his description.^[25] Eddowes' and Stride's murders were later called the "double event".^[26] Part of Eddowes' bloodied apron was found at the entrance to a tenement in Goulston Street, Whitechapel. Some writing on the wall above the apron piece, which became known as the Goulston Street graffito, seemed to implicate a Jew or Jews, but it was unclear whether the graffito was written by the murderer as he dropped the apron piece, or merely incidental.^[27] Police Commissioner Charles Warren feared the graffito might spark anti-Semitic riots, and ordered it washed away before dawn.^[28]

Official police photograph of Mary Kelly's murder scene in 13 Miller's Court.

• Mary Jane Kelly: she was killed on Friday 9 November 1888. Her gruesomely mutilated body was discovered shortly after 10:45 a.m., lying on the bed in the single room where she lived at 13 Miller's Court, off Dorset Street, Spitalfields. Her throat had been severed down to the spine, and her abdomen virtually emptied of its organs. Her heart was missing.

The canonical five murders were perpetrated at night, on or close to a weekend, and either at the end of a month or a week or so after.^[29] Except Stride, whose attack may have been interrupted, the mutilations became increasingly severe as the series of murders proceeded.^[30] Nichols was not missing any organs; Chapman's uterus was taken; Eddowes had her uterus and a kidney removed and her face mutilated; Kelly's body was eviscerated and her face hacked away, though only her heart was missing from the crime scene.

Historically, the belief that these five crimes were committed by the same man derives from contemporary documents that link them together to the exclusion of others.^[31] In 1894, Sir Melville Macnaghten, Assistant Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police Service and Head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), wrote a report that stated: "the Whitechapel murderer had 5 victims—& 5 victims only".^[32] Similarly, the canonical five victims were linked together in a letter written by the police surgeon Thomas Bond to Robert Anderson, head of the London CID, on 10 November 1888.^[33] While the police evidently treated the five murders as a single case, authors Stewart P. Evans and Donald Rumbelow argue that the canonical five is a "Ripper myth" and that while three cases (Nichols, Chapman, and Eddowes) can be definitely linked, there is less certainty over Stride and Kelly, and less again over Tabram.^[34] Dr Percy Clark, assistant to the examining pathologist George Bagster Phillips, linked only three of the murders and thought the others were perpetrated by "weak-minded individual[s] ... induced to emulate the crime".^[35] Macnaghten did not join the force until the year after the murders; and his memorandum contains serious factual errors about possible suspects.^[36] Some researchers have posited that the series may not have been the work of a single murderer at all, but of an unknown larger number of killers acting independently.^[37] Conversely, others suppose that the six murders between Tabram and Kelly were the work of a single killer.^[11]

[edit] Later Whitechapel murders

Kelly is generally considered to be the Ripper's final victim, and it is assumed that the crimes ended because of the culprit's death, imprisonment, institutionalisation, or emigration.^[15] The Whitechapel murders file does, however, detail another four murders that happened after the canonical five:

• Rose Mylett was found strangled in Clarke's Yard, High Street, Poplar on 20 December 1888. As there was no sign of a struggle, the police believed that she had accidentally choked herself while in a drunken stupor, or committed suicide.^[38] Nevertheless, the inquest jury returned a verdict of murder.^[38]
• Alice McKenzie was killed on 17 July 1889 by severance of the left carotid artery. Several minor bruises and cuts were found on the body, discovered in Castle Alley, Whitechapel. One of the examining pathologists, Thomas Bond, believed this to be a Ripper murder, though another pathologist, George Bagster Phillips, who had examined the bodies of three previous victims, disagreed.^[39] Later writers are also divided between those who think that her murderer copied the Ripper's modus operandi to deflect suspicion from himself,^[40] and those that ascribe it to the Ripper.^[41]
• "The Pinchin Street torso" was a headless and legless torso of an unidentified woman found under a railway arch in Pinchin Street, Whitechapel, on 10 September 1889. It seems probable that the murder was committed elsewhere and that parts of the dismembered body were dumped at the crime scene.^[42]
• Frances Coles was killed on 13 February 1891 under a railway arch at Swallow Gardens, Whitechapel. Her throat was cut. The body was unmutilated. A man named James Thomas Sadler, seen earlier with her, was arrested by the police and charged with her murder and was briefly thought to be the Ripper himself.^[43] However he was discharged from court due to lack of evidence on 3 March 1891.^[43]

[edit] Other alleged victims

In addition to the eleven Whitechapel murders, other contemporary attacks have been connected to the Ripper by commentators. In some cases, it is unclear whether these stories were true or whether they were fabricated as a part of Ripper lore.^[44] "Fairy Fay" was a nickname for an unknown murder victim allegedly found on 26 December 1887 "after a stake had been thrust through her abdomen".^[45] It has been suggested that "Fairy Fay" was a creation of the press based upon confusion of the details of the murder of Emma Elizabeth Smith with a separate non-fatal attack the previous Christmas.^[44] The name of "Fairy Fay" was first used for this alleged victim in 1950.^[46] There were no recorded murders in Whitechapel at or around Christmas 1887.^[47] Most authors agree that "Fairy Fay" never existed.^[44][48]

Annie Millwood (born c. 1850) was reportedly admitted to hospital with "numerous stabs in the legs and lower part of the body"^[49] on 25 February 1888. She was discharged but died from apparently natural causes on 31 March 1888.^[48] Ada Wilson was reportedly stabbed twice in the neck on 28 March 1888.^[50] She survived.^[51] Annie Farmer (born c. 1848) reported an attack on 21 November 1888. She had a superficial cut on her throat, possibly self-inflicted. A Jewish cigar-maker, Joseph Isaacs, was arrested on suspicion of the attack and of being the Ripper, but he was not connected to the crimes.^[52]

"The Whitehall Mystery" of October 1888

"The Whitehall Mystery" was a term coined for the headless torso of a woman found on 2 October 1888 in the basement of the new Metropolitan Police headquarters being built in Whitehall. An arm belonging to the body was previously discovered floating in the river Thames near Pimlico, and one of the legs was subsequently discovered buried near where the torso was found.^[53] The other limbs and head were never recovered and the body was never identified. The mutilations were similar to those in the Pinchin Street case, though in that case the hands were not severed. "The Whitehall Mystery" and the Pinchin Street case have been suggested to be part of a series of murders, called the "Thames Mysteries" or "Embankment Murders", committed by a single serial killer, dubbed the "Torso killer".^[54] Whether Jack the Ripper and the "Torso killer" were the same person or separate serial killers active in the same area is debatable.^[55] As the modus operandi of the torso killings differs from that of the Ripper, police at the time discounted any connection between the two.^[56] Elizabeth Jackson was a prostitute whose various body parts were collected from the river Thames between 31 May and 25 June 1889. She may have been a victim of the "Torso killer".^[54]

John Gill, a seven-year-old boy was found murdered in Manningham, Bradford, on 29 December 1888. His legs had been severed, his abdomen opened, his intestines drawn out, and his heart and one ear removed. The similarities with the murder of Mary Kelly led to press speculation that the Ripper had killed the boy.^[57] The boy's employer, milkman William Barrett, was twice arrested for Gill's murder but released for insufficient evidence.^[57] No-one else was ever prosecuted.^[57]

Carrie Brown (nicknamed "Shakespeare", reportedly for quoting Shakespeare's sonnets) was strangled with clothing and then mutilated with a knife on 24 April 1891 in Manhattan.^[58] Her body was found with a large tear through her groin area and superficial cuts on her legs and back. No organs were removed from the scene, though an ovary, either purposely removed or unintentionally dislodged, was found upon the bed.^[58] At the time, the murder was compared to those in Whitechapel though the Metropolitan Police eventually ruled out any connection.^[58]

[edit] Investigation

Inspector Frederick Abberline, 1888

The surviving police files on the Whitechapel murders allow a detailed view of investigative procedure in the Victorian era.^[59] A large team of policemen conducted house-to-house inquiries throughout Whitechapel. Forensic material was collected and examined. Suspects were identified, traced and either examined more closely or eliminated from the inquiry. Police work follows the same pattern today.^[59] Over 2000 people were interviewed, "upwards of 300" people were investigated, and 80 people were detained.^[60]

The investigation was initially conducted by the Metropolitan Police Whitechapel (H) Division Criminal Investigation Department (CID) headed by Detective Inspector Edmund Reid. After the Nichols murder, Detective Inspectors Frederick Abberline, Henry Moore, and Walter Andrews were sent from Central Office at Scotland Yard to assist. After the Eddowes murder, which occurred within the City of London, the City Police under Detective Inspector James McWilliam were involved.^[8] However, overall direction of the murder enquiries was hampered by the fact that the newly appointed head of the CID, Robert Anderson, was on leave in Switzerland between 7 September and 6 October, during the time Chapman, Stride and Eddowes were killed.^[61] This prompted the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren, to appoint Chief Inspector Donald Swanson to coordinate the enquiry from Scotland Yard.^[62]

"Blind-man's Buff": Punch cartoon by John Tenniel (22 September 1888) criticising the police's alleged incompetence. The failure of the police to capture the killer reinforced the attitude held by radicals that the police were inept and mismanaged.^[63]

Due in part to dissatisfaction with the police effort, a group of volunteer citizens in London's East End called the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee patrolled the streets looking for suspicious characters, petitioned the government to raise a reward for information about the killer, and hired private detectives to question witnesses separate from the police.^[64] The committee was led by George Lusk in 1888.^[64]

Butchers, slaughterers, surgeons and physicians were suspected because of the manner of the mutilations. A surviving note from Major Henry Smith, Acting Commissioner of the City Police, indicates that the alibis of local butchers and slaughterers were investigated, with the result that they were eliminated from the inquiry.^[65] A report from Inspector Donald Swanson to the Home Office confirms that 76 butchers and slaughterers were visited, and that the inquiry encompassed all their employees for the last six months.^[66] Some commentators at the time, including Queen Victoria, thought the pattern of the murders indicated that the culprit was a butcher or cattle drover on one of the cattle boats that plied between London and mainland Europe. Usually such boats docked on Thursday or Friday, and departed on Saturday or Sunday,^[67] and Whitechapel was close to the London Docks.^[68] The cattle boats were examined but the dates of the murders did not coincide with a single boat's movements and the transfer of a crewman between boats was also ruled out.^[69]

[edit] Criminal profiling

After the acquittal of Daniel M'Naghten in 1843, and the establishment of the M'Naghten rules, physicians were increasingly involved in determining the mental state of defendants, as well as the investigation.^[70] By the time of the Ripper murders, physicians were profiling the likely characteristics of an offender. The opinion offered by the police surgeon Thomas Bond, in November 1888, to Robert Anderson, head of the London CID, on the character of the "Whitechapel murderer" is the earliest surviving offender profile.^[70] At the end of October, Anderson asked Bond to give his opinion on the extent of the murderer's surgical skill and knowledge.^[71] Bond based his assessment on his own examination of the most extensively mutilated victim and the post mortem notes from the four previous canonical murders.^[33] He wrote:

All five murders no doubt were committed by the same hand. In the first four the throats appear to have been cut from left to right, in the last case owing to the extensive mutilation it is impossible to say in what direction the fatal cut was made, but arterial blood was found on the wall in splashes close to where the woman's head must have been lying.
All the circumstances surrounding the murders lead me to form the opinion that the women must have been lying down when murdered and in every case the throat was first cut.^[33]

Bond was strongly opposed to the idea that the murderer possessed any kind of scientific or anatomical knowledge, or even "the technical knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer".^[33] In Bond's opinion the killer must have been a man of solitary habits, subject to "periodical attacks of homicidal and erotic mania", with the character of the mutilations possibly indicating "satyriasis".^[33] Bond also stated that "the homicidal impulse may have developed from a revengeful or brooding condition of the mind, or that religious mania may have been the original disease but I do not think either hypothesis is likely".^[33] Psychologists accept Bond's proposals as "thoughtful and intelligent",^[70] and suppose that the penetration of the victims with a knife and "leaving them on display in sexually degrading positions with the wounds exposed" indicates that he derived sexual pleasure from the attacks.^[11][72] Non-psychologists, however, often dismiss such hypotheses as insupportable supposition.^[73] There is no evidence of any sexual activity with any the victims.^[11][74] Comparisons with the motives and actions of modern-day serial killers have led to suggestions that the Ripper could have been a deranged schizophrenic, like the "Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe, who heard voices instructing him to attack prostitutes.^[75]

[edit] Suspects

Speculation as to the identity of Jack the Ripper: cover of the 21 September 1889, issue of Puck magazine, by cartoonist Tom Merry.

The concentration of the killings at the weekend and within a few streets of each other has indicated to many that the Ripper was employed during the week and lived locally.^[76] Others thought the killer was an educated upper-class man, possibly a doctor, who ventured into Whitechapel from a more well-to-do area;^[77] such notions draw on cultural perceptions such as fear of the medical profession, distrust of modern science or the exploitation of the poor by the rich.^[78] Drawing on these, Stephen Knight promoted an elaborate Masonic conspiracy theory in his 1976 book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, that many authors dismiss as a fantasy.^[79] Suspects proposed years after the murders include virtually anyone remotely connected to the case by contemporary documents, as well as many famous names, who were not considered in the police investigation at all. As everyone alive at the time is now dead, modern authors are free to accuse anyone they can, "without any need for any supporting historical evidence".^[53] Suspects named in contemporary police documents include three in Sir Melville Macnaghten's 1894 memorandum, but the evidence against them is circumstantial at best.^[80]

Despite the many and varied theories about the identity and profession of Jack the Ripper, authorities are not agreed on a single solution and the number of named suspects reaches over one hundred.^[81][82]

[edit] Letters

Over the course of the Ripper murders, the police, newspapers and others received many hundreds of letters regarding the case.^[83] Some were well-intentioned offers of advice for catching the killer. The vast majority were deemed useless and subsequently ignored.^[84]

Hundreds of letters claimed to have been written by the killer himself,^[85] and three of these in particular are prominent:^[86]

• The "Dear Boss" letter, dated 25 September, was postmarked 27 September 1888. It was received that day by the Central News Agency, and was forwarded to Scotland Yard on 29 September.^[87] Initially it was considered a hoax, but when Eddowes was found three days after the letter's postmark with one ear partially cut off, the letter's promise to "clip the ladys (sic) ears off" gained attention.^[88] However, Eddowes' ear appears to have been nicked by the killer incidentally during his attack, and the letter writer's threat to send the ears to the police was never carried out.^[89] The name "Jack the Ripper" was first used in this letter by the signatory and gained worldwide notoriety after its publication.^[90] Most of the letters that followed copied this letter's tone.^[91][92]

The "From Hell" letter

• The "Saucy Jacky" postcard was postmarked 1 October 1888 and was received the same day by the Central News Agency. It had handwriting similar to the "Dear Boss" letter.^[93] It mentions that two victims were killed very close to one another: "double event this time", which was supposed to refer to the murders of Stride and Eddowes.^[94] It has been argued that the letter was mailed before the murders were publicised, making it unlikely that a crank would have such knowledge of the crime, but it was postmarked more than 24 hours after the killings took place, long after details were known by journalists and residents of the area.^[94]

George Lusk, President of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee.

• The "From Hell" letter, was received by George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee on 16 October 1888. The handwriting and style is unlike that of the "Dear Boss" letter and postcard.^[95] The letter came with a small box in which Lusk discovered half of a human kidney, preserved in "spirits of wine" (ethanol).^[95] One of Eddowes' kidneys had been removed by the killer. The writer claimed that he "fried and ate" the missing kidney half. There is disagreement over the kidney: some contend it belonged to Eddowes, while others argue it was nothing more than a macabre practical joke.^[8][96]

Scotland Yard published facsimiles of the "Dear Boss" letter and the postcard on 3 October, hoping someone would recognise the handwriting, but nothing useful came of this effort.^[97] In a letter to Godfrey Lushington, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, Charles Warren explained "I think the whole thing a hoax but of course we are bound to try & ascertain the writer in any case."^[98] On 7 October 1888, George R. Sims in the Sunday newspaper Referee implied scathingly that the letter was written by a journalist "to hurl the circulation of a newspaper sky high".^[99] Police officials later claimed to have identified a specific journalist as the author of both the "Dear Boss" letter and the postcard.^[100] The journalist is identified as Tom Bullen in a letter from Chief Inspector John George Littlechild to George R. Sims dated 23 September 1913,^[101] and a journalist called Fred Best reportedly confessed in 1931 that he'd written the letters to "keep the business alive".^[102]

[edit] Media

Newspaper broadsheet referring to the killer as "Leather Apron", September 1888.

The Ripper murders mark an important watershed in the treatment of crime by journalists.^[15][103] While not the first serial killer, Jack the Ripper's case was the first to create a worldwide media frenzy.^[15][103] Tax reforms in the 1850s had enabled the publication of inexpensive newspapers with wider circulation.^[104] These mushroomed later in the Victorian era to include mass-circulation newspapers as cheap as a halfpenny, along with popular magazines such as the Illustrated Police News, and made the Ripper the beneficiary of previously unparalleled publicity.^[105]

After the murder of Nichols in early September, the Manchester Guardian reported that: "Whatever information may be in the possession of the police they deem it necessary to keep secret ... It is believed their attention is particularly directed to ... a notorious character known as 'Leather Apron'."^[106] Journalists were frustrated by the unwillingness of the CID to reveal details of their investigation to the public, and so resorted to writing reports of questionable veracity.^[15][107] Imaginative descriptions of "Leather Apron" appeared in the press.^[108] Rival journalists thought that their competitors' descriptions of "Leather Apron" were "a mythical outgrowth of the reporter's fancy".^[109] John Pizer, a local Jew who made footwear from leather, was known as "Leather Apron".^[110] He was arrested even though the investigating inspector reported that "at present there is no evidence whatsoever against him".^[111] He was soon released after the confirmation of his alibis.^[110]

Sensational press reports, combined with the fact that no one was ever convicted, has confused scholarly analysis of the murders, and created a legend that cast a shadow over later serial killers.^[112] After the publication of the "Dear Boss" letter, "Jack the Ripper" supplanted "Leather Apron" as the name adopted by the press and public to describe the killer.^[113] The name "Jack" was already used to describe another fabled London attacker: "Spring-Heeled Jack", who supposedly leapt over walls to strike at his victims and escape as quickly as he came.^[114] The invention and adoption of a nickname for a particular killer became standard media practice with examples such as the Axeman of New Orleans, the Boston Strangler, and the Beltway Sniper. Examples derived from Jack the Ripper include the French Ripper, the Düsseldorf Ripper, the Camden Ripper, Jack the Stripper, the Yorkshire Ripper, and the Rostov Ripper.

[edit] Legacy

The 'Nemesis of Neglect': Jack the Ripper depicted as a phantom stalking Whitechapel, and as an embodiment of social neglect, in a 'Punch' cartoon of 1888

In addition to the contradictions and unreliability of contemporary accounts, attempts to identify the real killer are hampered by the lack of surviving forensic evidence.^[115] DNA analysis on extant letters is inconclusive;^[116] the available material has been handled many times and is too contaminated to provide meaningful results.^[117] To date more than 150 non-fiction works deal exclusively with the Jack the Ripper murders,^[118] making it one the most written-about true-crime subjects.^[81] The term "ripperology" was coined by Colin Wilson in 1976 to describe the study of the case by professionals and amateurs.^[119][120] Six periodicals about Jack the Ripper have been introduced since the early 1990s: Ripperana (1992–present), Ripperologist (1994–present, electronic format only since 2005), the Whitechapel Journal (1997–2000), Ripper Notes (1999–present), Ripperoo (2000–2003), and the The Whitechapel Society 1888 Journal (2005–present).^[121]

The nature of the murders and of the victims drew attention to the poor living conditions in the East End,^[122] and galvanised public opinion against the overcrowded, insanitary slums.^[123] In the two decades after the murders, the worst of them were cleared and demolished,^[124] but the streets and some buildings survive. The legend of the Ripper is still promoted by guided tours of the murder sites.^[125] The Ten Bells public house in Commercial Street, renamed "Jack the Ripper" in the 1970s before returning to its old name after protests from feminists,^[126] was frequented by at least one of the victims and was the focus of such tours for many years.^[127]

Jack the Ripper features in hundreds of works of fiction and works which straddle the boundaries between both fact and fiction, including the Ripper letters and a hoax^[128] Diary of Jack the Ripper. The Ripper appears in novels, short stories, poetry, comic books, games, songs, plays, films, and the 1930s opera Lulu by Alban Berg.

In the immediate aftermath of the murders, and later, "Jack the Ripper became the children's bogey man."^[129] Depictions were often phantasmic or monstrous. In the 1920s and 1930s, he was depicted in film dressed in everyday clothes as a man with a hidden secret preying on his unsuspecting victims; atmosphere and evil were suggested through lighting effects and shadowplay.^[130] By the 1960s, the Ripper had become "the symbol of a predatory aristocracy",^[130] and was portrayed in a top hat dressed as a gentleman. The Establishment as a whole became the villain with the Ripper acting as a manifestation of upper-class exploitation.^[131] The image of the Ripper merged or borrowed symbols from horror stories, such as Dracula's cloak or Victor Frankenstein's organ harvest.^[132] The fictional world of the Ripper can fuse with multiple genres, ranging from Sherlock Holmes to Japanese erotic horror.^[133]

Unlike murderers of lesser fame, there is no waxwork figure of Jack the Ripper at Madame Tussauds' Chamber of Horrors, in accordance with their policy of not modelling persons whose likeness is unknown.^[134] He is instead depicted as a shadow.^[135] In 2006, Jack the Ripper was selected by BBC History magazine and its readers as the worst Briton in history.^[136][137]

[edit] See also

• The Blackout Ripper
• List of serial killers by number of victims
• Servant Girl Annihilator

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Begg, Paul (2003). Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History. London: Pearson Education. ISBN 058250631X
• Begg, Paul (2006). Jack the Ripper: The Facts. Anova Books. ISBN 1861056877
• Cook, Andrew (2009). Jack the Ripper. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberley Publishing. ISBN 9781848683273
• Curtis, Lewis Perry (2001). Jack The Ripper & The London Press. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300088728
• Eddleston, John J. (2002). Jack the Ripper: An Encyclopedia. London: Metro Books. ISBN 1843580462
• Evans, Stewart P.; Rumbelow, Donald (2006). Jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0750942282
• Evans, Stewart P.; Skinner, Keith (2000). The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. London: Constable and Robinson. ISBN 1841192252
• Evans, Stewart P.; Skinner, Keith (2001). Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0750925493
• Marriott, Trevor (2005). Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation. London: John Blake. ISBN 1844541037
• Meikle, Denis (2002). Jack the Ripper: The Murders and the Movies. Richmond, Surrey: Reynolds and Hearn Ltd. ISBN 1903111323
• Odell, Robin (2006). Ripperology. Kent State University Press. ISBN 0873388615
• Rumbelow, Donald (2004). The Complete Jack the Ripper. Fully Revised and Updated. Penguin Books. ISBN 9780140173956
• Sugden, Philip (2002). The Complete History of Jack the Ripper. Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0786702761
• Werner, Alex (editor) (2008). Jack the Ripper and the East End. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 9780701182472
• Woods, Paul; Baddeley, Gavin (2009). Saucy Jack: The Elusive Ripper. Hersham, Surrey: Ian Allan Publishing. ISBN 9780711034105

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jack the Ripper

• Rossmo, D. K., "Jack the Ripper", Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation, Texas State University.
• Jack the Ripper 1888: examines the history of the murders and puts them into the social context of the era.
• The National Archives: images and transcripts of letters claiming to be from Jack the Ripper.

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